54 percent of Americans approved of President Donald Trump’s program to deport illegal aliens, the latest CBS News poll taken June 4 to June 6 shows. The consistent findings throughout President Trump’s second term that began on Jan. 20 show that immigration, key to Trump’s wins in 2016 and 2024, are now his most-popular issue among voters.
That’s a popular mandate.
The news comes as the President and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth under 10 U.S. Code Sec. 12406 have deployed now 4,000 National Guard operating under federal authority plus 700 Marines to Los Angeles, Calif. to protect federal buildings including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after hundreds of rioters attacked a federal building, agents and police on June 6.
And it follows what can only be called a complete crackdown of the southern border, with southwest border encounters once again were at record lows in April at just 12,035, according to the latest data compiled by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Overall, illegal immigration has been reduced, from 559,009 from February through April of 2024 down to just 34,762 in 2025 since President Donald Trump took office, a drop of 94 percent. It’s the lowest ever on record in data dating all the way back to 2000.
The string of Trump policies to rein in illegal immigration began on day one, as President Trump declared a national border emergency on Jan. 20 under the National Emergencies Act: “THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 201 and 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), hereby declare that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States…”
The emergency is being used to reprogram certain military construction funds for building the southern border wall under 50 U.S. Code Sec. 1631 and 10 U.S. Code. Sec. 2808.
And Trump said the national border emergency requires the use of the military under 10 U.S. Code Sec. 12302, “Ready Reserve”: “and that section 12302 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretaries of the military departments concerned, subject to the direction of the Secretary of Defense. To provide additional authority to the Department of Defense to support the Federal Government’s response to the emergency at the southern border, I hereby declare that this emergency requires use of the Armed Forces…”
And, like in 2019, Trump is using the emergency to finish construction of the southern border wall under 50 U.S. Code Sec. 1631 and 10 U.S. Code. Sec. 2808: “and, in accordance with section 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1631), that the construction authority provided in section 2808 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretary of Defense and, at the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, to the Secretaries of the military departments.”
And, Trump declared Tren de Aragua and other drug cartels as terrorist organizations on Jan. 20 by executive order in accordance with 8 U.S. Code Sec. 1189, “Designation of foreign terrorist organizations.”
President Trump also invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act on March 15 via proclamation that the international criminal organization Tren de Aragua, supported by Venezuela, was engaged in an “invasion,” stating it was a “hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States.”
This has been a military operation for months. And it could go further. One thing that Trump has not done just yet is invoke the Insurrection Act. But there’s already a predicate to do so. Going back to the Jan. 20 national emergency declaration, Sec. 17 defunds sanctuary states and cities: “Sanctuary Jurisdictions. The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, to the maximum extent possible under law, evaluate and undertake any lawful actions to ensure that so-called ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions, which seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations, do not receive access to Federal funds. Further, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall evaluate and undertake any other lawful actions, criminal or civil, that they deem warranted based on any such jurisdiction’s practices that interfere with the enforcement of Federal law.”
Now, with rioters attacking and obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws, sanctuary states and cities must now finally decide where they truly stand. Do they want to continue obstructing federal authority?
In the meantime, the house has passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that provides around $50 billion for border wall construction and border security facilities, $12 billion for state border security reimbursement, $8 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel and vehicles, $6 billion for border protection technology and other security enhancements, $1 billion for grants to state and local jurisdictions, $45 billion for additional detention capacity, $14 billion for removals, $8 billion for hiring more ICE agents and $3 billion for unaccompanied children. It also removes about 1.4 million illegal aliens from Medicaid and other government programs with stepped up enforcement.
The bill is still pending before the Senate.
It’s a comprehensive program from start to finish under President Trump’s leadership, a dramatic departure from the open borders of former President Joe Biden, which some 10.8 million border encounters all told from January 2021 to November 2024 saw according to data compiled by the Office of Immigration Statistics.
President Trump is taking the emergency seriously, but the real question facing the Senate is whether they want to stand with Trump in favor of immigration enforcement, or if they too want to become a barrier to the rule of law. As it is, the American people want the law enforced.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
